The real issue of the War was slavery, which the North sought to expunge from the face of the earth. The Northern version is that the so-called Lost Cause is a myth in the sense that it is based not on historical fact but rather on wishful, sentimental, and self-justifying thinking developed after the fact of a bitter defeat. Finally, only a minority of Southerners owned slaves. It was New England ships after all that brought slaves to American shores. Slavery was an institution of long-standing for the presence of which both North and South had responsibility. ![]() Some refer to this as states’ rights, the self-governance of the states in their relation to the central government. The main issue at stake was regional self-determination, mostly political and economic. Put briefly, the Southern version holds that while the South was defeated in the War Between the States, the cause for which it fought was noble and some would even say sacred. The other version originated north of the old surveyor’s line a bit later. One of these originated in the original states of the Southern Confederacy. Now, to clarify and to anticipate the rest of this essay, I have to say that there are two versions of the Lost Cause. Which brings us to my theme today: John Pelham and the “myth” of the Lost Cause. ![]() I gather that it is the very sort of book I had aimed to write. Maxwell (University of Alabama Press, 2011). Recently, however, I came across a notice of a book on the Alabama artillerist entitled The Perfect Lion, by Jerry H. I finally abandoned it as a lost cause of my own. The business of earning a living and other distractions, however, intervened to keep that project from being completed. ![]() Some twenty years ago I had planned to write a full-length study of John Pelham-known in the South as the Gallant John Pelham-and the making of myth.
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